My Crooked Family

by James Lincoln Collier

  “Siddown,” he said. I sat down again. He came back to the table, sat, and poured the rest of the whiskey into his glass.

  Finally he said, “Russell didn’t say nothin’ to you at all? He didn’t say nothin’ abou’ me dropping by?”

  “No.”

  He took a swallow of whiskey. It was mostly gone. “Know what, Rog’r? I think Russell hired that snake to plug me. What do you think of that?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Well?”

  “Pa, I got to go to bed. It’s a school night.”

  “Don’t be in no rush. I wanna know who that redheaded weasel is.”

  Ma raised herself up. She sat there at the table, blinking her eyes in the light, red marks on her cheek where it got creased while she was sleeping. “Goodness, I must have dozed off,” she said. “Roger, it must be late. Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “I wanted to go to bed. Pa wouldn’t let me.” Pa picked up his glass and finished off the whiskey.

  “You go to bed now, Roger,” Ma said. “It’s a school night.”

  *****

  On Saturday night I put my new shirt and my yellow trousers into a bag and carried them down into the cellar. I put the new duds on, and hid my raggedy old clothes under the junk that was lying around. I took a couple of dollars out from under the slates where I’d hidden my money, and slipped out of there, heading for the Arcadian Gardens. After I got a couple of blocks away from the house I slowed down so’s I could slouch along with my hands in my pockets the way the sports did. Oh my, did I feel proud to be dressed up so fine. I wished I had a derby instead of a cloth cap, and pointed shoes, but at night nobody was much likely to notice my shoes. Every once in a while, I pulled up a corner of the shirt collar to my nose, just to smell the newness of it. Someday I was going to buy new shirts all the time. There wasn’t anything to beat the feeling of having brand-new duds on.

  I got to the Arcadian Gardens and went on in. The place was going full blast. The inside bar was packed, the air blue from cigarettes and cigars, and noisy as could be from the laughing and shouting. The open-air part was jammed, too. Up on the bandstand a little five-piece outfit was banging away at a ragtime song and the dancers were jigging around pretty wild, the girls’ skirts flying up. Ma would have called it vulgar, but I liked seeing them fling themselves around while the band thumped out that ragtime. I felt like I belonged somewhere for a change.

  To look like I belonged, though, I had to be holding a beer.

  Maybe they would think I was too young. I pulled my cloth cap down a little so it threw shadows on my face, shoved my hands into my pockets, and slouched up to the bar. The bartender didn’t give it a second thought, but slid a mug along the bar. I paid and stood leaning with my back against the bar, holding the beer mug and looking around to catch the sights—the people at the bar laughing and joking, the band whacking away, the dancers flinging themselves around. It made me pretty happy to see everybody having so much fun. It was Saturday night. They had a whole day ahead of them when they didn’t have to think about their jobs. They weren’t thinking about anything beyond Saturday night. They’d keep on going until they dropped, and all day Sunday, too, if they had the money for it. Monday could look out for itself.

  Someday, when I had the money for it, I’d come there every night and stand around in fancy duds, drinking a beer and smoking a cigar. Maybe I’d bring Lulu too. I wouldn’t let her have any beer, not until she was older. But I’d buy her some ice cream or something. She’d really love being there, especially if I bought her a fancy dress to show off in.

  Although maybe that would be wrong. Ma’s idea was that Lulu should go to high school, not so’s she’d learn anything in particular but so she could meet the right kind of fellas—fellas who would have respect for her, and were likely to finish up high school and get office jobs. I heard her talking about it with Mrs. O’Brien. Lulu was going to be pretty when she got older, Ma said. If she had some nice clothes she’d have all kinds of chances. It wasn’t too early for Lulu to start thinking about her future, Ma said.

  I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around. It was Circus Penrose. He’d got on his usual yellow trousers and a red-and-black checked shirt. He gave me a wink and tipped his head, and I followed him through the big doors outside, around the edge of the dance floor. To tell the truth, suddenly I wished I’d got different color trousers. Red, or blue, or something. I didn’t want to look like Penrose anymore. But I figured I’d better pretend that nothing was different.

  Penrose picked out a table by the fence that went around the garden, with nobody nearby, and we sat there facing each other, with our beers between us. “You tell your pa I didn’t have nothing to do with him getting hurt?”

  I didn’t want to talk about Pa with Circus, but I had to say something to keep up the front. “He’s still suspicious of you. I think you ought to stay away from him for a while. Maybe he’ll get over it.”

  “Well, I didn’t do it, and that’s the truth. I wish you was able to convince him.”

  “It isn’t easy to convince Pa of much,” I said.

  “Oh, I know that. Everybody knows your pa is hard as nails.”

  “I thought you didn’t know Pa.”

  “Well, I don’t know him personal,” Penrose said. “Like I say, I wouldn’t recognize the man if I fell across him. What I meant to say was, everybody says he’s hard as nails.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Pa anymore,” I said.

  He took out his silver toothpick, stuck it between his teeth, and let it sit there, sticking out. “Had a spat with your pa, did you?”

  “No. I just don’t want to talk about him.”

  “Suit yourself.” He shifted the toothpick with his tongue over to the corner of his mouth. “If he was my pa, and had got shot, I’d want to talk about him, just to relieve my mind. Of course never having a pa I can’t really say. But still, that’s the way it seems to me. But suit yourself.”

  He sat silent for a minute, waiting for me to chime in with something about Pa, but I didn’t. Instead I said, “Did Russell tell you what the plan was?”

  Circus leaned forward, his hands around his beer mug. “That’s what I come to tell you. You’re going to be a messenger boy for a while.”

  I knew what kind of a job that was. Lots of boys worked as messengers. Charley O’Neill was a messenger boy for a while, and he told me about it. You sat in a little office somewhere, and people would come in and give you a message or a package to deliver. Sometimes, if they were rich enough to have a telephone, they would call up and ask you to pick up a message and take it somewhere. Charley said that the whores were always calling up and asking you to bring over sandwiches and beer. That was the good part, Charley said, for you got to go into the parlor houses and look at the girls standing around in their underwear. He quit after a while, though. You had to depend too much on your tips, Charley said, for the pay wasn’t anything and he wanted a job where the money was more dependable. He wanted to get married and have kids sometime, and you needed a regular job for that.

  But being a messenger boy sounded kind of interesting to me. I wasn’t worried about the pay the way Charley was, for the money was going to come rolling in after we did the job. “What am I supposed to do?”

  He took a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. “Here.”

  I took the piece of paper and read it. It said, “Rapid Messenger Service, 23 Wheeler Street.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “Sure. I’ve been past there lots of times.”

  “You go in there tomorrow. Tell them you’re the boy Circus Penrose told them about. Say that Circus would be particular grateful if they could find a place for you.”

  “Suppose they don’t want to hire me?”

  “Tell them Circus will be a trifle disappointed to hear about it. Just the least bit disappointed. Just a touch.”

  The next afternoon after school I went around to Wheeler Street and along
to the Rapid Messenger office. It was upstairs over a barber shop, a little place not much bigger than our living room, with a desk, a telephone, and a couple of chairs for the messengers to sit on while they waited for jobs. A big map of the city was pinned to the wall.

  Behind the desk sat the dispatcher, a short, fat fella in his thirties. He was smoking a cigar and talking on the telephone when I came in. When he got finished he said, “You Penrose’s kid?”

  “Yes.” So it was all fixed up.

  He jerked his thumb at a closet door behind him. “See if you can find a uniform in there that comes somewhere near fitting you.”

  I looked in the closet. There were four sets of brown jackets, pants, and caps hanging on hooks. I tried on two or three jackets until I found one that fit pretty good and put it on, and then the pants and the cap. The jacket had fancy shoulder straps and brass buttons down the front. The pants buckled just below the knee. The hat had a stiff visor and a brass insignia above saying RAPID. TO tell the truth, the uniform hadn’t been cleaned too recent. There was a big red stain that looked like jelly on one cuff and dirt on the knees—I figured somebody had been shooting craps in it. I’d never had on a uniform before—never been on a real baseball team, or in the Boy Scouts, or in some band. I was glad I had a uniform for once.

  I hardly had got the uniform on when the phone rang, and off I went to pick up a package at a drugstore and deliver it to a customer. I was busy all the rest of the afternoon and didn’t stop until seven o’clock when the night boy came on. I made over a dollar in tips. A month ago that would have seemed like a lot of dough to me, but it didn’t anymore, not since I came to see how much money there was in other things. I decided to give some of it to Lulu. Even a nickel would make her happy, for you could buy a lot of penny candy for five cents. If I gave her a quarter it would be like heaven to her—she could stuff herself with candy for a week.

  When I got home Ma and Pa and Lulu were eating supper—spuds, chicken, and beans all boiled up together. Having the whole family sit down together for dinner was kind of funny. We’d done it a lot since Pa had come home from the infirmary, but before that he’d hardly ever been home at dinnertime, and a lot of the time it’d be just me and Lulu eating, and sometimes me cooking, too. But now Pa was sitting home with nothing to do with himself, and he wanted a nice hot supper every night. It was a big advantage for me and Lulu.

  Ma said, “What kept you so late?”

  I sat down at the table and helped myself from the pot. “I got a job.”

  “Good,” Pa said, shoveling home some spuds. “About time you pulled your weight around here.”

  “What sort of a job?” Ma said.

  “Messenger boy,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Ma said. “I’ve heard stories about the messenger boys. Sometimes they have to go into the worst sort of dive.”

  “Won’t do him any harm,” Pa said. Then he gave me a suspicious look. “How come you decided to get a job all of a sudden?”

  “It was what you said the other night—that I ought to pull my weight around here.” I knew he wouldn’t remember what he’d said.

  He went on looking at me. “Who fixed it up for you?”

  “Nobody. I went around asking. Some other kid took sick and had to quit.” It surprised me how good I was getting at making up stories.

  Pa went on staring at me. “Russell didn’t have nothing to do with it, did he?”

  “Why would he?” I said.

  “Russell?” Ma said. “Which Russell? Not Russell Qualey? Roger, surely you’re not involved with Russell Qualey.”

  How much of anything did Pa remember? I gave him a quick look, but he’d got his head down and was shoveling in some beans. “I don’t even know who Russell Qualey is,” I said.

  Ma looked at Pa and then at me again. “There’s something going on here,” she said.

  “Who’s Russell—what that name was?” Lulu said.

  “Never mind, Lulu,” Ma said. “He’s not anybody you need to know about.” She turned to me. “Do you know him, Roger?”

  “Oh boy,” I said. “I thought you’d all be happy I got a job instead of asking me a whole lot of questions. Maybe I should quit it.”

  “No, no, it’s all right, Roger,” Ma said. “We are pleased. Now, help yourself to seconds.”

  They didn’t say anything more about it, but Pa was suspicious. That worried me a lot, for he’d try to find out more about it. It still bothered him to move around, but he could walk pretty good now and might be able to get out and start checking up on me. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that.

  Of course Pa took it for granted that I’d turn my money over to him. I’ll admit, most kids did have to turn their earnings over to the families, at least in poor families, so there wasn’t anything strange about that. In most families, though, the pa or the ma would allow the kid to keep a little for themselves to spend. I knew Pa, and he wouldn’t. It made me mad, for he was likely to spend the money on whiskey instead of a new sweater for me. But I would get even, for one day I’d have a pile of dough for myself and walk on out of there and not give him any.

  I didn’t try to lie to him about my salary, which was five dollars a week, for he could check up on it easy enough. But it would be a lot harder for him to judge what I was earning in tips. I began turning over to him fifty or seventy-five cents every night and holding out a quarter or half a buck. Pretty soon I had a couple of dollars saved up. I didn’t need it, for I still had over forty dollars of the fifty I’d got from Russell, and I decided to buy Lulu something with my tip money.

  So one morning on the way to school I said, “Lulu, if you had a couple of bucks, what would you buy with it?”

  “A couple of bucks? Oh, I’d buy lots of things—a new dress, and a little watch, and one of those gold rings with a pretty stone like the whores wear, and—”

  “Hold it, Lulu. You can’t buy all that stuff with a couple of bucks.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not? Because one of those rings would cost maybe five bucks, and a watch at least three.”

  “I don’t mean a big pocket watch,” she said. “I mean one of those little ones like Grandma has pinned to her blouse.”

  “That kind would probably cost more.”

  “How can it cost more if it’s smaller?” she said.

  “It just would. It’s hard to make all those little pieces fit inside there.”

  “Oh. Well, anyway, that’s what I want.”

  “Which, if you could have just one? The watch or the ring?”

  She thought about it. “I’d probably lose the watch. Besides, those rings look so pretty. Some of the whores have one on each finger. They flash like anything in the lights when they lean out the window and wave their hands at the fellas.”

  I gave her a look. “When did you ever see that?”

  “I go out at night sometimes. Sometimes me and Minnie sneak out when Ma and Pa are drunk.”

  “You’re only nine,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be going out by yourself at night.”

  “I can go out if I want to,” she said. “You can’t stop me, Roger.”

  “Oh yes I can. And I will, too, if I catch you.” I could see that I was going to have to keep a closer eye on her. Maybe someday if I had a lot of money she could come and live with me, and I’d hire somebody to keep an eye on her when I was up at the Arcadian Gardens having a beer and watching the dancing. “All right, what have you decided?”

  “Would you really get me a ring, Roger? Like the whores have?”

  “Lulu, you got whores on the brain too much.”

  “But they have such pretty clothes and rings and things.”

  I decided to get off that subject. “Well, all right, we’ll see. Maybe I can get you a ring.”

  “Oh, would you, Roger?” Thinking about it made her eyes shine, and I resolved I would do it, even if I had to spend some of my fifty dollars.

  11

 
WALKING ALL OVER THE NEIGHBORHOOD the way I did on my messenger trips, I had plenty of opportunity to look in jewelry shops for rings with stones in them—blue stones, red stones, yellow stones, black stones, almost any color you could name. Some of them had plain gold bands, some of them had fancy bands that twisted around like vines. You could spend as much as you wanted, for some of the rings had diamonds in them and cost hundreds. But there were some pretty nice ones for three or four dollars. I figured Lulu would be pretty happy with that. And I decided I’d buy one the first chance I got.

  But before I got the chance, one day the dispatcher sent me out to a certain address to pick up an envelope for delivery. It turned out to be a dive called the Peacock. I could never figure it out—the worst places had the nicest names.

  I went down a flight of stone stairs and opened the door. It was a real dive—a narrow cellar with stone walls, a rough bar along one side, a few old tables carved up with initials, and down in the back a young black fella in his undershirt beating on a piano. There was only eight or ten men in the place, no women. One of them was Circus Penrose. He gave me a nod, and I followed him down to the back. We sat down at a table near the piano, so the ragtime would cover our talking.

  “Circus, Pa’s getting suspicious about this job.” The whole thing was giving me a funny feeling, for I didn’t know whose side I was on anymore. I wasn’t on Pa’s side, that was sure. But I didn’t like Penrose, either, and didn’t trust him. The only one who seemed to play fair was Russell.

  “What did he say?”

  I decided not to say anything more than I had to, but I figured Russell had better know, so as to be on the lookout. I didn’t want Pa to spoil the job, not with the risks I was going to take and the amount of money that could come out of it. “He says Russell’s got a big job on and he’s suspicious I’m part of it. He keeps trying to pry it out of me what it is.”

  Circus looked scared. “You didn’t tell him nothing, did you, Rog?”

  “Of course not. But he’s bound to start checking around as soon as he feels good enough to go out. I figured you’d better tell Russell.”